Margaret Sykes

In the following viewpoint, Margaret Sykes protests against commentators, political candidates, and others who opposed a second-trimester abortion for a fourteen-year-old Arizona girl who had been raped. Some anti-abortion advocates argued that the girl should not have been given federal funds to pay for her abortion; others believed that she should have birthed the child and put it up for adoption. Sykes maintains that any victim of rape should be able to easily obtain an abortion. Moreover, she contends, the attempt to control access to abortions through court-approval processes—as was the case with the Arizona rape victim—is a hypocritical tactic of anti-abortion activists. Such activists really want to outlaw all abortions, the author asserts. Sykes is a researcher and writer with a special interest in reproductive issues.

As you read, consider the following questions:

1. What is the Hyde Amendment, according to Sykes"
2. In the author’s opinion, why is adoption not necessarily the best solution to an unwanted pregnancy"
3. According to Sykes, what kinds of restrictions on reproductive rights occur in U.S. hospitals"

This is an open letter to doomed [former] presidential candidate Steve Forbes, Internet pin-up girl Laura Schlessinger, and anyone else who opposed an abortion for that 14-year-old Arizona rape victim.

Please, guys. Just tell us what you want. Is that too much to ask"

Imean, if a 14-year-old girl who doesn’t have a home or a family and who got pregnant when she was raped at age 13 can’t have an abortion without being dragged through the courts and the newspapers and having people trying to stop her left and right, who can? Do you want every woman to wonder what might happen to her, if she needs an abortion that’s permitted by state and federal law but might upset some fetus freak? Just tell us, okay"

Should Rape Victims Be Forced to Give Birth"

What was the problem here? Is it that this rape victim was only 14 years old? Do you want to force a girl in her early teens to become a mother after being raped, but not someone like, say, your wife, Mr. Forbes? Just tell us, please.

Is it that she needed public funds to pay for the abortion? But even the Hyde Amendment currently says that federal funds can be used to pay for an abortion if the pregnancy resulted from rape. Are you folks saying that this law doesn’t go far enough? Do you now want to make poor women carry their rape-caused pregnancies to term, while better-off women like, say, your wife, Mr. Forbes, can pay to have their abortions quietly? Could you just tell us what you want"

Is it that the teen was 23 weeks pregnant? Surely that’s not it. I mean, all you “pro-lifers” have told us and told us and told us that abortion is just as bad whether it takes place at 23 hours or 23 days or 23 weeks. You’ve opposed every piece of legislation based on the length of a woman’s pregnancy because you didn’t want us to get the impression that early abortions are somehow better than later ones. You say that “viability” doesn’t make any difference, and that embryos and fetuses are complete human children from the second after fertilization to the second before birth. Were you lying about all this? Maybe late-term fetuses are a bit more like babies than speck-sized embryos after all. Can you be honest for once? Just tell us.

The raped 14-year-old first asked to have an abortion when she was 14 weeks pregnant. Would that have been okay? Do you want to add to your legislative wish list that women can only have abortions when they are raped and only when they are less than a certain number of weeks along? Just tell us. We need to know.

Adoption Is No Solution

“Dr. Laura,” you were among those who said that both the teen and her baby “should be adopted.” Well, Laura, this girl has been in foster care since she was 5, and apparently she didn’t like it much. Could it be, perhaps, that she’s decided not to become a mother until she knows she’s ready to take care of her own child? Maybe she’s not ready to risk letting her child be raised by someone else. Shouldn’t we really be congratulating this young woman for not bringing a child into the world that she can’t love and take care of, instead of shouting “Have it adopted” at her"

And isn’t it funny that all the pledges of support for this girl were contingent on her giving birth? Are you going to offer to adopt her now that she’s had the abortion, Laura? Are you going to adopt any of the other thousands of young girls who also don’t have homes or families to love them and are at risk in exactly the same way as this girl you were beating your scrawny breast about, a day or so ago? Why is that after all the hoopla, not one Arizona child currently available for adoption has had someone ask to adopt any of them? Do you want children needing homes to be adopted, or do you just want to use them as fodder for your rants? Just tell us, if you can.

Mr. Forbes, you state your abortion position on your www.forbes2000.com website. After blathering on about this and that, you end with: “Steve supports a human life amendment to the Constitution, except in the cases of rape, incest and the life of the mother.”

“Except in the case of rape.” Did you forget that when you howled, also on your website at Forbes Mourns Arizona Supreme Court Decision . . . the decision that upheld a lower-court judge’s approval of the teenager’s abortion . . . that “This decision is a murderous affront to decency"” Is consistency too much to expect of someone who’s running for president? Please tell us.

Pro-Life Hypocrisy

Maybe you’ve guessed by the tone of this letter that I’m disgusted with all of you. Well, I am. I’m disgusted that the confidential details of this girl’s sad situation were leaked by state officials to John Jakubczyk, the president of Arizona Right to Life. I hope the culprits are discovered and punished, but they probably won’t be.

I’m disgusted at the relatives who are suddenly coming out of the woodwork, each one claiming that they really care about the girl and want to give her a home. They sure sound like they know what she needs. “She has no choice but to behave around me or I’ll whup on her butt or set her in her room,” says her uncle Bob Harkins. Funny, the way she kept running away from him.

I’m disgusted at the hypocrisy and muddled thinking displayed by “pro-lifers” who on the one hand want to have teenagers go to judges to get permission for abortions if they can’t tell their parents, yet call for judges who give permission for abortions judicial activists who ought to be removed from the bench.

I’m disgusted that “pro-lifers” want to pass laws restricting my right to get an abortion, yet don’t want to live by those same laws once they are passed.

I’m disgusted that nobody who opposed this particular abortion will be honest about the reasons why.

Steve and Laura and the rest of you, I’m disgusted, all right. You’re talking out of both sides of your mouth. If what you really want is that no woman should ever be secure in thinking that she can have an abortion if she needs or wants one, then please just say so. Don’t let us be lulled into a false sense of security because of what the laws say, if you’re going to oppose even lawful abortions on some unstated, unpredictable basis.

Restrictions on Reproductive Rights

Most American women probably don’t know that you’ve already seen to it they won’t get treatment to prevent pregnancy in hospitals after they are raped.

They probably don’t know that heart patient Michelle Lee was turned down for an abortion when her doctors couldn’t prove she was more than 50% likely to die if she continued her pregnancy, because hospital officials were afraid to interpret the laws you’ve passed more favorably to Michelle.

They probably don’t know that another woman’s abortion was turned down when her membranes ruptured at 14 weeks, making it impossible to save either the pregnancy or the fetus and necessitating an emergency abortion to save her from the risk of infection, because you’ve let Catholic hospitals get away with imposing their religious values on everyone else.

Most American women don’t know that their ability to obtain an abortion—even if they’ve been raped or need the abortion for health reasons—has already been restricted.

If you’re hoping to restrict our access to abortion even more, please tell us. We want to know, because it’s going to affect things like how we vote in the next election.

Just tell us what you want our access to abortion to look like. Just tell us when we can expect our own medical care to be taken over by the Catholic Church, or by some hospital committee interpreting your laws, or by government officials sneaking our private information to the local fetus freak. Is that too much to ask"